Participant Testimonials

You can read some quotes from our participant feedback survey below. In this survey, participants were asked to reflect on their experiences of research participation and how this has impacted their everyday life.

"The benefit is that I now have valid testing to back-up the fact that I am poor at face recognition, so I feel my difficulties are recognized as an actual condition."

"Dealing with people is essential for career progression. It is invaluable to have this knowledge because it makes dealing with other people much easier. It stops situations escalating. For example, if I upset someone by disagreeing with them about something, I am now aware that I won't necessarily notice that they are displaying a particular emotion. So I can build-in questions, like 'how do you feel about that?' My husband can also prompt me as he knows when two different people will look the same to me. It gets very confusing when I have had a conversation with someone, they walk out the door, and five minutes later they (actually someone else) walk in again and I carry on the original conversation. It also helps very much because I can look at situations that occurred pre-diagnosis in my work or personal life, where things went from bad to worse quickly and see how things had been impacted by me not knowing about my condition."

"I'm more confident about saying 'I'm face blind, I may not recognize you next time. Please come up to me and say hi, I'm so-and-so."

"Because I have been tested my family now know this is a real problem, not just me being lazy or stupid."

"I am kinder to myself."

"Because I have been tested my family are happy to explain my condition if someone tells them I blanked them."

"I am more confident."

"I'm not alone with this. Awareness in the wider community would be better. It should count as a disability."

"The testing has made me feel more confident with the fact that I am poor with this and that I am not the only person who has such difficulties."

"I now allow myself to look longer at a face and remind myself to look at the whole face (because I have never gathered much information from faces, I tended to not bother looking at them)."

"I am more chilled out about the issue itself, which makes more relaxed in general, which makes me more approachable."

"As I have been tested and found to be well below average, I am comfortable telling people now that I am poor at face recognition."

"Since my diagnosis it is easier to just tell people as and when the situation warrants. Most people find it really interesting. Some remember and do dash across the supermarket carpark to talk to me and say who they are."

"I think it has made me a lot more aware of any kind of sensory processing and how varied the human condition is. I seem to like people more. I also tend to notice more in general about them, even if I don't remember their face - I remember more details about their clothes, etc."

"I am really grateful for the opportunity to get involved with this kind of research and hope that the understanding that you get out if it helps many other people."

"Having these results will help a lot with the NHS recognizing the issues. Some of the difficulties I have in recognizing emotion are documented anecdotally and it is fantastic to have independent test results that back this up."

"I now have the proof that something was really wrong with me. My neurologist doesn't seem to place the problem very highly compared with my other problems, but it is socially crippling as I inadvertently snub people in the street."

"I am very pleased that I was able to find out that my son does not have facial recognition impairments, unlike myself."